An Empirical Survey of Chinese Learners’ Use of Near-Synonymous Verbs: “发生”, “产生” and “出现” of Thai CFL Learners in Sirithep Foreign Language School, Chiang Mai Province
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Abstract
The Chinese words “发生,” “产生,” and “出现” are commonly used near-synonymous verbs, which often cause confusion for learners of Chinese as a foreign language. This study aims to (1) investigate the overall usage of 发生, 产生, and 出现 by Thai learners of Chinese at Sirithep School in Chiang Mai Province, (2) analyze common error types related to semantic understanding, collocation, and contextual appropriateness, and (3) propose pedagogical suggestions for teaching these verbs. The participants were drawn from a population of 115 Thai secondary-school learners who had received systematic Chinese instruction. Using a simple random sampling method, 20% of the total population (n = 23) were selected as the sample. Data were collected using a researcher-designed questionnaire consisting of 13 items, including multiple-choice, true–false, and sentence-construction tasks,and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. The results show that learners confuse these words in actual usage. The main types of errors include inappropriate collocations, unclear semantic understanding, and inappropriate use in pragmatic contexts. These errors are mainly caused by negative transfer from the learners’ native language, insufficient distinction of word meanings, and limited explanation of usage in classroom teaching. The findings further suggest that learners’ difficulties reflect incomplete form–meaning mapping and underspecified lexical-semantic representations in second language acquisition.
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